Kew Gardens is named after the well-known botanical gardens at Kew, in England.
The heirs of Englishman Albon P. Man, who had acquired much of the area in 1868, laid out a new community and called it first Kew, then Kew Gardens. An 1875 railway station nearby was named Hopedale, after a hotel at what is now Queens Boulevard and Union Turnpike. The turnpike began as a dirt road designed as a toll road.